December 24, 2008

December 15, 2008

Last week saw us take a relaxing holiday in lovely Nelson Bay. Plenty of bush walking (the photo is of a wild orchid we saw in Tomaree National Park), beaches, and spending time with our family. Port Stephens really is a nice part of the world.

November 24, 2008

David Thorne, I was horrified to see all these web sites that have ripped of your artwork. It is not clear whether they are publishing a copy of your spider drawing, or the actual drawing, but I do note that most sites don't attribute you as the author. IANAL but you should seriously get yourself a lawyer.

October 21, 2008

(A Java IDE is an Integrated Development Environment. Basically Netbeans is the thing I use to write, test and debug Java projects.)

I started using Netbeans when I started on Maprequest (an open source project for producing georeferenced maps for Ozi Explorer from web based maps). Now I fight on with Netbeans in an Eclipse heavy environment at work.

I think one of the best things about Netbeans is its support for Maven 2 projects. In an environment where the standard build system is Maven 2 (and where the continuous integration platform uses Maven 2) it's good to be able to have real Maven running inside Netbeans. That way you know that what you have running in your IDE is the same as what your continuous integration is going to run.

I try to be polite, but it's hard not to boast about Netbeans' great svn support when talking to people struggling with Eclipse. It's great that ClearCase support is back again too!

Part of the problem with the show is that you can't help but compare it to the original. In fact they have used a number of elements of the original, but amazingly the show doesn't fell too much like a copy. Keep up the good work.

October 14, 2008

"This normally peaceful suburban town is still reeling following the news Monday that a local resident, whose name is being withheld by police pending a full investigation, left an iPhone unattended for more than three hours in a car parked in the hot sun."

August 05, 2008

Google Street View has been turned on for Sydney. This is where you can get a photo of what the street looks like. It so happens that I was snapped by the camera while walking up a street in Ashfield one afternoon, so I checked to see if it is online:

July 30, 2008

The answer is either "It's LaTeX. Get used to it," or "Don't worry. A word processor can do all you need!" depending on which camp you fall into. That is, the "most of the known world" camp, or the other camp.

I think in this situation, even knowing someone who knows LaTeX must give you some kind of geek cred. That's more than enough cred for me.

July 15, 2008

The school holidays are upon us, and so we took up the invitation from some friends to join them at MacMasters Beach on the NSW Central Coast. It's a great spot. Here's a photo from a day when we walked through Bouddi National Park to get down to Little Beach.

Anyway, The Gruen Transfer (Wednesday nights on ABC1) has taken a little while to grow on me, but last week's was a ripper. They have a segment called "The Pitch" where 2 ad agencies compete to produce a TV commercial to sell the unsellable.

Last week's challenge was selling an invasion of New Zealand. I think the winner was 303's "100% There for the taking". I've got nothing against New Zealand, but this was pretty funny I think. Take a look.

April 06, 2008

April 03, 2008

The town in NSW, rather than the movie. We went there recently to make an attempt at Koscuiszko.

The weather turned against us on top of the "mountain", so we didn't end up doing the walk, but it was interesting to see Jindabyne again.

I used to live in the area some time ago, and it has changed a lot since then (20 years ago?). I'm not sure the town is physically much bigger, but it seems "culturally" bigger (if that makes sense).

On the OSM side, Jindabyne is already pretty well mapped. I did add a couple of streets, and did a bit of East Jindabyne. I have a track for the foot/cycle path around the lake which I hope to put in OSM in the next week or so.

February 18, 2008

Something I guess I have taken for granted up until now is that streets in Australia have names. I mean, of course they have names, don't they? How do you tell someone the address if the street doesn't have a name?

Mapping has brought up some other interesting questions, like what is the real name of a street? Is it what the street sign says? Is it what existing maps say? Is it what people who live in the street call it? Sometimes all disagree.